Ever since I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, I’ve approached every class with pretty much the same mentality: what can I learn from this class about how to teach? Even if the subject matter of the class itself is totally unrelated to English or teaching, I still try to collect all of the information I can about how a successful classroom works and what I can do in the future to keep all of the good ideas and ditch all the things that don’t work. The more I learn about teaching, the more my former beliefs about what it means to be a teacher break down. I’m beginning to realize that this job is going to be a lot more difficult than I first imagined — but also way, WAY more creative, reflective, and awesome than I first imagined!

The interesting thing about this class is that I definitely feel like it has shaped and changed who I will be as a teacher, but it has done so largely by breaking down and destroying ideas that I used to have, and I don’t necessarily feel like I have clear and cohesive replacement ideas for what to do instead. For instance, I absolutely love the idea that Kim has modeled in her class of not just “playing school” with quizzes and points and such. As much as possible, I want to shoot for more of a credit-or-no-credit style grading when I am a teacher; if you do the thing, you get the points. If you don’t do the thing, no points. If you half-ass the thing, you do it again, and then you get the points. While this won’t work with everything in high school, I think a lot of things could be graded this way, particularly writing assignments, and I think there could be an enormous benefit to trying this.

One of my favorite concepts from this class has been the intersection of literacy and identity, and this is something which I’m not yet quite sure how to incorporate into a classroom. I think this is where choice in assignment can come in; assignments like the inquiry paper and the 20Time/Genius Hour project can allow students to pursue their own interests and express their emerging identities, or help them to discover new ones. In an article I read for another class, a junior high boy is quoted saying “School only teaches you how you are dumb, not how you are smart.” This boy was expressing frustration with the fact there are always new things to be learned in school, and little to no space for expressing and enjoying what you already know and are good at. Inquiry and choice-based projects can reverse this by giving students a space where they can be the experts, pursuing something they are excited about or expanding their knowledge in a field they already enjoy.

Additionally, though, I think there is something to be said on behalf of exposure. I probably wouldn’t identify as a backpacker and outdoorsy person today if my friends Ben and Sean hadn’t half-forced me to go on a trip to Yosemite with them back in 2008. Similarly, many students might not know they are readers and writers, or certain kinds of readers and writers, until we compel them to try out different things. This is why I think there is still a place in the curriculum for classic literature alongside the free choice projects; the key, of course, is to make the classic literature not suck. This is where my other favorite part of this class comes in: The book about re-mixing and remediating Moby Dick! While there are a few books still taught in school which truly are the worst, I generally really like literature, and I passionately believe that there are ways to help students connect with literature – we just have to break away from the ol’ “read out loud, read at home, take a quiz in class, write an essay, repeat” method, and get creative. I think that having a production-centered classroom is key to this; students should always be making things informed and inspired by the texts they are reading in class – and I don’t mean more essays. Have them write raps and skits, or translate the text into their own words; have them write fanfiction which answers a question that a reader might have after finishing the book, make a video or trailer for the book, or draw a few pages of their own graphic novel interpretation of the book. Host a debate in class over an issue (imaginary or real-world) inspired by the book. Research the historical context of the book, and do stuff with that. The list goes on and on to the point that I really feel like there is no excuse for doing the same ol boring thing in class every day.

More than anything else, though, this class has simply changed my perspective on literacy and learning. I never considered myself to be a person with a deficit view of students, but I realize now that I kind of was – at least in certain ways. I’ve definitely always bought into the “literacy crisis” rhetoric, mostly because I’d never heard an argument to the contrary. I’ve also always gotten a weird OCD joy out of “correcting” other people’s papers, which I now realize is kind of effed up, as I have gained a whole new understanding and appreciation for how to encourage and develop literacies in students. (The word “correcting” kind of makes me shudder now, actually.) I’ve also never thought about things like texting, tweeting, or gaming as genuine, legitimate skills and types of literacy. In general, I feel like I have gained a whole new lense with which to look at people and notice all of the ways in which they are incredibly literate and talented and awesome in ways that I never noticed before. I’ve never bought into the “blank slate” idea, thankfully, but now I really totally super don’t buy into it ;) Now, whenever I hear someone ranting about kids these days always playing video games and texting and wasting their lives and not being able to read a book or whatever, I have to genuinely restrain myself from jumping into the conversation with a “Well actually…” I feel that I am more prepared to be a teacher because of this class; not so much because I’ve learned a whole bunch of new information, but because my perspective has shifted, widened, and deepened.

I knew I was in the right article group when I clicked on the very first link under the “Literacy and Identity” header, and found myself unable to stop reading! While I have (surprisingly) enjoyed all of the readings I’ve browsed through, the one that has inspired the most conversation among our group has been the Wikipedia entry on the “Looking Glass Self”. This psychological concept/theory type thing essentially makes the claim that, as people, our identity is derived primarily from our perception of other people’s opinions about us. In other words, if I feel like others see me as valuable, interesting, capable, etc., I am way more likely to see those positive traits in myself, and to develop an identity as a valuable, interesting, capable person. This can work conversely as well, of course – I will also begin to see myself as incompetent/ignorant/etc. if I believe that is the way others see me. This all gets really crazy when social media becomes involved, because we construct profiles with an eye toward what we want other people to think of us – but then, because of the profile we have created, we imagine that other people see us in this certain way, and we actually begin to develop an identity based upon this perception. So, weirdly, the act of constructing an identity with the conscious or unconscious intention to be seen by others (like on a social media site or, alternately, through our manner of dress, the bumper stickers on our car, or the posters on our wall) actually ends up affecting the way that we see ourselves!

Crazy stuff, man.

There are a number of ways that identity in this sense and literacy are connected, and as far as I can see, the concept of the Looking Glass Self intersects with them all. One of the coolest things that my professor Al Schademan told me awhile back (and which I’m sure I’ve already written about in this class at some point) was that, as teachers, our job is not just to teach students how to do a thing, but to help them craft an identity as a person who can do the thing. My goal is not just to teach a student to write a paper; I want him or her to identify as A PERSON WHO CAN WRITE.

One of the reasons that I really love this concept is because I can see it at work all around me where learning is happening in the wild, not just in school. I’m the training coordinator for my job at the TBar, and after training probably about a zillion people over the last two years, one of my favorite parts has become watching newbies grow from the position of brand-new outsiders who don’t quite belong, to developing an identity as a TBar employee. As new employees are trained in the literate practices of TBar, and as they slowly pick up on the procedures, jargon, and inside jokes particular to this new space, they slowly begin to develop a new identity as a person who has a role and can belong in this workspace. The other really interesting thing I’ve noticed is that the employees who end up staying the longest seem to be the ones who have developed the strongest sense of “TBar identity”, while the employees who develop little to no “TBar identity” (as far as I can see) seem to quit and move on pretty quickly.

You may have noticed, too, that certain companies really excel at building an identity in their employees, and this seems to have a really positive impact on employee loyalty. Starbucks is one that I’ve noticed; I can’t even count the number of people I know who proudly identify as Starbucks baristas, and wear their green apron like it’s a badge of mocha-stained honor.

Anyway, back to the Looking Glass Self. I think all this is related because, in what I can tell from my training experience, people seem to grow and excel the best in environments where they are being given a lot of respect, affirmation, and constructive criticism. In the situations that I have seen, if a new employee starts off on a bad foot in some way and develops ill favor with the senior employees, they rarely recover completely from this, and frequently end up quitting before fully developing a positive “TBar identity”. This seems to mean that the newbie’s perception of other employees’ opinion of them has a direct effect on their ability to learn, grow, perform well, and as a result end up developing a positive identity as a person who can belong and contribute valuably to their work space.

I’m not sure exactly how this relates to school, but I feel like it must. Here’s what I have so far:

1. Developing an identity is one of the primary goals of learning.
2. Developing an identity is one of the key components of being able to learn in the first place.
3. A negative identity with relation to a thing can prevent someone from being able to learn it.
4. The way that I interact with a student/trainee/other human can directly affect (either positively or negatively) their experience of learning, and consequently their identity.
5. Yeah.

Today as I reflect on the past several weeks of school, I find myself wondering what kind of teacher I would be if I had not taken the classes that I am enrolled in this semester. It’s a little bit difficult to separate out what I have learned in this class specifically, because it fits together so well  with the things that I have been learning in English 431, English 534, and in my English 30 workshop! However, Literacy Studies in particular is providing me with a new foundational way to think about the teaching of reading and writing, and the way that those skills are valued in society.

Prior to this class, I didn’t even know what “literacy studies” was, apart from the fact that it was a class I needed to graduate. To be honest, on some level, I’m still not quite sure what it is! So far I feel like the primary role of this class in my life has been to tear down the assumptions that I didn’t even know I had about literacy. I think that Andrea Lunsford’s “Semi-Literate Youth” and  Bronwyn Williams’ “Why Johnny Can Never, Ever Read”  have been among the most impactful articles that I have read so far this semester, largely because of the way that they have challenged the standard rhetoric about youth literacy that I have always pretty much bought into without  question.

While I have always been a believer in the idea of valuing multiple intelligences, I have also always subconsciously judged people who lack the specific variety of literacy skills that I deem important. I remember when I first became an English TA in high school and was charged with grading the homework of younger students, and I am a bit disturbed to recall the weird feeling of joy and self-importance that I received from making marks on their writing. I guess it must have been the stage of life I was in, where I was skilled enough to discover the errors of my peers but not yet mature enough to know how to couch my responses in a constructive and life-giving way rather than in a belittling way. Interestingly, as I have progressed through school and handed in papers to a variety of professors, I’ve found myself wondering if perhaps some of them have never quite grown out of the stage that I found myself in as a TA in high school, receiving a sense of gratification from my ability to notice the mistakes of others.  This makes me a little sad and a little angry, and also a little fearful that I will end up like that one day, although I’d like to think that classes like this one are chipping away at the likelihood of that! Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I think that many teachers have never been challenged to redeem their deficit view of students and their literacy practices. Even a lot of really good teachers, like my mom, are quick to bemoan the downfall of intelligent society by pointing to the poor writing of students.  I am willing to acknowledge that some students – like a few of those in my English 30 workshop, for instance – really do struggle to get their thoughts down onto paper into a culturally and academically acceptable format. What I am unwilling to do, however, is focus on the errors over the ideas, or on the specific skill over the whole person. Literacy skills in the area of academic writing are not an end in themselves, and I want to keep that in mind as I step into a future of helping students become the writers that they are capable of being.